


Ochre

by MelKaine



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Memory Loss, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24294763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelKaine/pseuds/MelKaine
Summary: She shouted, enraged.“What the hell are you doing here?”Zuko, the Fire Prince Zuko, just watched her, in silence.And then Aang chose that moment to toss her in chaos.“Katara, don’t you remember that Zuko is our friend now?”*Set in S3, between "The Firebending Masters" and "The Boiling Rock". Complete. A chapter every saturday.*
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 427





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimers: These characters don’t belong to me. Eventual issueing gets me no profits. All rights reserved to the legitimate owner of the copyright.
> 
> Good evening.  
> This fanfiction will NOT contain major characters death, graphic violence nor rape.  
> In this story I chose a more mature approach to the characters while still trying to keep them IC (I hope).  
> English is not my first language, my loving husband betaread this for me, and my best friend revised it. Any remaining mistake is entirely my fault.  
> To all of you, a good read.
> 
> Mel Kaine

She opened her eyes, slowly, to a pinwheel of colours and sensations.

Stone and green and wind in her hair and soft fabric and warm, comforting skin against one of her hands.

She was going to close them again when the vibrant, scorching gold engulfed her vision and she dived in it, sinking mercilessly, drowning.

Her heart gave a lurch of terror so pure it almost hurt her like a real wound in her chest.

The gold of Fire Nation’s eyes.

The gold of flames benders.

The gold of assassins.

She cried, trying to crawl away, those eyes now so wide, were going to draw her in, to burn her to cinders, to ash that an inclement wind would disperse.

Her breath was so quick she felt like a dying rabbit.

A sure end in front of her.

“Katara…”

She let out a small sound, caught in the middle between a moan and a sob.

Bronzed skin just at the right corner of her eyes, strong arms, blue arrow, white fur, green clothes.

Her brother, her friends, Appa.

“Wh…”

She could say no more.

Gold again.

Tongues of black ink on burnt red.

She would fight, would fight for her life, for her friends’ lives, for freedom and everything else.

She started to move her hands, feeling water nearby, calling it to her to protect, to save, to… resist.

And then a laughter.

Toph cackled at her right, just behind Sokka, in whose arms she still was huddled.

“You sure took a hit so hard I’m certain even our _dear friend_ Ozai must have heard it back in Caldera”.

Katara looked at her, confused, eyes searching around, again.

Gold and ink and red and flames, another time.

She pushed away her brother, water finally answering her call.

She looked at _him_ with hate and fury as she was finally ready to fight him.

She cast a glance around her, why hadn’t Sokka unsheathed his sword, why wasn’t Aang calling Appa to fly them all away, why didn’t Toph take a fighting stance?

Was she the only one seeing him?

She shouted, enraged.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Zuko, the Fire Prince Zuko, just watched her, in silence.

She couldn’t understand.

Those wide open eyes, almost like he was doing her the courtesy to let her see them better.

And that… mask on his scarred, ugly face.

A great demonstration of his fine actor’s arts.

Ingenuity, confusion… pain?

Almost like being taken by surprise.

She scoffed at him loudly.

Didn’t he know that he deserved to be looked at like this?

She was ready to strike.

She was not a frightened little girl anymore.

She was a master waterbender.

She was a warrior.

She was not pure anymore.

And then Aang chose that moment to toss her in chaos.

“Katara, don’t you remember that Zuko is our friend now?”

She turned her head so sharply that she felt real pain in her neck.

She almost whipped Aang with water just to teach him not to swear like that again.

§

She let her feet dangle towards the vast nothingness below.

She was seated on the edge of one of the many ruined parts of the Air Temple of the West… or was it the Eastern one?

She couldn’t remember.

At the beginning she thought they were all playing a sick, deranged kind of stupid game with her.

Stupid because she would never fall for such a blatant, incredibly big lie and, more importantly, stupid because they were going to die at the hands of the one and most tenacious enemy that had hunted them all over the world.

But then she looked them in the eyes and no one was laughing and they weren’t dying and Sokka would never, could never keep a face so straight for so long and she… just got down on her knees and stared at nothing for moments long like entire ages, while they filled her in the recent developments.

They went to the West Air Temple after failing the invasion in Caldera. Zuko found them and told them that he decided to turn his back to his nation, that he would fight with them to end the war, that he would teach Aang firebending.

That he was good now.

She could not remember anything, when she woke up, in her mind, the eclipse still had to come yet, soon.

She shook her head, covering her face with her trembling hands.

Behind her a shadow had been waiting for a very long time, in the dark.

She still couldn’t believe them.

Even knowing that Aang was terrible at lying, even knowing that if her friends, her _family_ , told her that she had the duty to believe it, how could she?

They were talking about _him_! The most arrogant, cruel, lying coward that she could think of. The same beast that betrayed her and Aang in Ba Sing Se.

A friend?

Good?

No, it was impossible.

It couldn’t be.

She took conscience, gasping, of the most terrible thing of it all.

If what they said was true it meant that, at some point, she had accepted him too.

How could she?

Profoundly angry at herself she stood, turning abruptly.

It was time to get back to the others and start clarifying that Zuko could never be good, that they surely had been deceived, fooled by that stupid lost boy look on that scarred face, misled by his sad story of a dead mother and a caring uncle.

No, she wouldn’t let her friend face this danger, she’d never, ever, let anyone else of her loved ones unprotected. Ever again.

She had sworn it on her necklace in front of her mother’s grave.

So she left behind the void at the end of the stoned floor and marched back towards them when that shadow detached from the others in a near corner and gold was, once again, once more, in front of her hard eyes.

“Katara… ”

The first thing she noticed was how soft that voice was.

Almost a whisper, like the mourning sound of an unintentionally crushed flower.

An echo in an empty body.

Thin like a kid’s hair.

So frail.

“Katara… ”

The second was how full that voice was.

Like an overflowing wineskin brought in for a feast.

Like a handful of skin.

Like fur and like… what was that word used by adult women…

Desire.

“Katara…”

The third was how near that voice was.

Her breath congealed like one of her water daggers.

He was standing right in front of her with his gold-ink-red-black-pale presence.

Her mind screamed danger, but the sudden warmth he was radiating so close to her made her body shiver in a way she had never, before.

Something, like the beginning of a slow warm wave caressed her back, crawling up her nerve to try to be remembered but her thoughts were so disarrayed that it couldn’t find a single clear path and it died on a shore of arid sand and sharp prejudices.

He opened his mouth, surely to call her name again – _how dared he? who gave him permission to do so?_ – she suddenly felt like crying and smiling at the same time and it was so strange that she couldn’t bring herself to leap back when he almost took her hands with his own but…

He didn’t.

He stopped before touching her.

She was so close – _she was in danger, real danger, move stupid girl, move_ – that she saw how much that aborted movement cost him.

Why?

Lost in that umpteenth perplexity, she forgot to step back, to hit him, to fight him, to demand space and to be suspicious.

She forgot everything for a moment.

A cloud passed away in front of the splendid half moon.

He didn’t call her name again.

The wind, climbing back the abyss some feet behind her, stopped.

Just because of that she could hear him.

“Don’t you really remember… anything?”

She tilted her head, despite herself.

It was instinctual, like not lying.

“No”.

And now she was rapidly getting angry again – _how dared he? I’m not a liar like you, bastard_ – but he was still so near and that cruel gold was now illuminated by Yue so she could clearly saw it becoming ochre…

“About?” she asked, still defiant, still watching those eyes like an hawk.

“Nothing important” he answered.

And from ochre to burnt soil.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, there.  
> After doing a last (umpteenth) revision of this chapter before adding it I upgraded the rating, just to be sure, almost all of my works are graphic so I'm kind of unreliable when it comes to rate them.  
> Again my deepest thanks to my husband, who became my betareader, my confidant and almost my co-author, for this story and for an eventual side I'm not sure I'll do in the end. Thank you so much to my best friend too, who found the last errors. Any remaining mistakes are my own.  
> To all of you a good read.

The beginning of it all was just a single stare.

A single stare, unblemished by hate or even curiosity.

Like being seen for the very first time, the thought all of a sudden made him blush so much, that night, that he had to scramble back into the shadows, just outside the bright light of their fire.

Sometimes he couldn’t believe that he succeeded. That they accepted him with just some shout, two or three threats, a couple of serious lessons of firebending and a dead badly painted assassin .

But he did it and now he was part of their group. Of their lives.

She had been the most difficult to convince and, of all the things that he thought would win her trust back, the heat – his heat – surely wasn’t the first to come to his mind.

But it made all the difference, unbelievably.

The same heat that fueled his inner core, the same heat of the flames that destroyed her home and her mother and her hope.

That same heat.

Just a brush of fingers around the breakfast bowl, crashing into her around a corner, her open palms across his back to heal a wound, shoulder to shoulder listening to a storm pass over the temple.

And, besides, the heat was the only thing that she accepted from him.  
  


Every time he tried to tell her something about Ba Sing Se, every time he tried to apologize, to awkwardly talk about the hows and the whys she just… left.

Without saying anything.

Without a parting excuse.

Without rage or animosity or even contempt.

He learned to stop trying, to stop talking to her with words.

He kept whispering his apologies with his fingers near hers, he kept to beg her forgiveness with the warm trace of his hand on her skin, he kept justifying to her letting his body rise its temperature whenever they were sitting together.

Just for her.

And then, a fateful night, she was seated at the edge of the temple, a secluded spot where the worn out stones gave way and open up on a vast abyss.

The moon was high, maybe she was merely restless or just not tired enough to sleep.

He sat with her to keep her warm, in silence.

A single smile – _her smile_ – brightened all the vacuity of the dark inferno in front of them.

Like the rising of an unexpected sun.

That made him feel suddenly lightheaded and serene.

She took his hand, under the unforgiving eyes of her new goddess Yue – _so sure of herself, so strong, a warrior, a beautiful ruthless warrior with an hostage in her hands_ – and she told him, innocently, that she had never minded the cold, of course, but now that she had tried his warmth she could never go back.

And he discovered himself so greedy and she was greedier than him, even against her better judgement.

They knew that they could die at any moment.

So he snatched her every single time she ventured a step out of the sight of her friends, their friends. In dark, shadowy corners or under the benevolent vaults.

He always kissed her like the very first time.

Like he was a man sentenced to death, just walking down to the gallows being granted the last wish.

Like he was going to leave for war tomorrow.

She kissed him like she was war.

So proud, so independent when alone, she quickly learned to became pliant only in his warmth, especially when he clutched her against his body in tight, secret chambers, a hand in her long hair, another on the small of her back.

And she would growl if he dared to let his hands wander lower and she would growl if he didn’t let them wander enough.

Like a feral creature made of blue moans and cool lips.  
  


Testing him, daring him to, challenging him to disrespect her, taking him to limits a young man could not bear too long but always kind and sort of generous in her gifts.

Till the night she gave him everything.

Ironic how he remembered every single detail with military precision when she couldn’t remember anything at all.

At the first cloth touching the stones he couldn’t believe it. He, even, incredibly tried to stop her because her honor would be… and the people would… her brother would… and the Avatar…

She didn’t give a damn.

Those past few days she had teased him out of his mind, he couldn’t even meditate a single moment without seeing parted lips and bronzed hands inside his tunic, the feeling still lingering on the protruding bones of his hips, cotton hair and the touch of her breast against his back, water dripping down her chin, eyes like a demon statue of cyan and crystals.

And he could not take it anymore, she knew it, she smiled, he knew it, he was worried – _he’d be violent, he’d take her right there on the floor, he would force her legs open, he would tear the fabric_ – she tilted her head, baring her neck and told him to take off her her mother’s necklace.

He thought that doing that would be more intimate than even taking her virginity.

It was complete forgiveness.

Complete trust.

Complete surrender.

It was permission.

It was a gracious, romantic, crystal clear order to take her as a man takes a woman.

And he thanked Agni above or Tui or La and everyone in the middle.

Because in another moment he would have taken her, regardless.

He bit her on the sweet curve between her shoulder and the side of her neck, he sucked her skin, gripping her arms to keep her still, like the predator’s claws to a prey.

His body betrayed him ages ago but he didn’t blush about things like those, he let her feel freely the exact amount of the debt she had collected with him.

He felt her shivers, he loved her shivers like few other things under the sky and above the earth.

But then he heard her moaning for real and he was lost.

He tore at her clothes – _he knew it, he knew it, damn it_ – strong hands pushing her on a heap of two bedrolls he stole that morning – walking away from the fire with them in his hands and a painful throb in his loins – keeping her down even if she wasn’t going anywhere, he needed to keep her down, to command her legs open, to order her lips to be vulnerable for his forceful kisses – _or was she doing it to him? Did it matter?_ – his hands wandering lower and lower, she tried to joke growling, he wouldn’t have any of it this time, he caressed the intimacy between her legs with his knee, making her ride his thigh, making her hiss with pleasure – oh Agni, that word exploded in his mind like the breath of a thousand dragons, burning to nothing his shame, his worries, his barely there sanity – he took her hips, lifting them, the fabric of her wraps loose and dispersed on the floor like strings of pearls, his hands palming her backside a moment and then returning again on the front at the seam of her thighs and up, suddenly, in what seemed to her a firebending move made using her body and aiming to burn her breasts in his hot palms. She cried out, long and delighted.

A smile on his lips, fingers closing enough to massage without hurting, his thigh wet.

Again no words between them, no need for such a thing when the heat was doing all the talking and more so.

He pushed her down – _again, yes again_ – with a hand, his trousers with the other, his damned fingers giving sparks in the dark, revealing diluted red on her cheeks.

He took her legs behind the knees and pushed them apart and up, making a nest for himself in between them and he felt her taking his face in her cool, small hands waiting the right time to…

When he entered her she kissed his scar.

Keeping her lips there, against the rough, frail skin for the entire time of his penetration.

Her pain against his pain.

And then she let him go, moving her arms above her head just to invite his fingers on her wrists, tightening her insides to feel his length, shivering again, arching her back, one of her long legs curling around one of his shoulders, bracing against the strong thrusts she knew were about to start but nothing could have prepared them.

Taking each the flower of the other, he hissed so low it sounded like a deep resounding crash of a gust of wind in a cave, she screamed so high it sounded like bliss.

Wide open eyes above her, her embarrassed little smile – dazed and bent around another moan – one of his hands not letting them unprepared again, that was a dangerous secret that they had to keep at any cost.

Thrusting again he covered her mouth with his hand, muffling her sounds just in time – _so good, so Agni-damned good_ – her eyes full of pleasure, the contrast of their skins on her face made him groan deeply and shudder, biting his lips, his molted gold eyes reduced to incandescent slits, her insides so wet he almost came on that thought alone.

He couldn’t control himself anymore, just a rush of strong, stuttering movements in a crescendo of padded sounds against trembling fingers on trembling lips, the soft morbid squelching sound below making them moan-shiver-cry out all again, eyes round and chained together, her thighs clutching his hard flanks, his virility pressing inside without withdrawing from her body for more than one inch – pushing, pushing, bending pleasure, bending her pleasure – the hand at her wrist sailing away for her chest, a soft mound of flesh to anchor him in agitated waters, his other hand not daring to let go of her mouth, of her increasing sounds, his head strained back, towards a ceiling of discovery and beautiful darkness with myriads of bright fire behind his eyelids but not for long – _I have to look at her, now, before the end, I have to spy her peak, the moment she will be mine forever_ – ochre eyes, so dark, so lost, the dust shaping their form in the half light, lightning in his ochre now, almost all of his strength in his thrusts and surely all of her voice against his hand.

She arched like the bridge of ice in the Northern Water Tribe, her eyes full of colored snowflakes, her womb full of him.

He came and, for the time of a snap of fingers, he knew nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, third part revised.  
> As always, many thanks to my love and my dear friend for their help. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> To all of you a good read.
> 
> Mel Kaine

They divided their first time and remained together on those humid bedrolls, admiring the ruins of their innocence, of their childhood, with a smile and the accomplice happiness of a well hidden secret.

They knew the name of what they were doing and they kept doing it, because, well, it made sense.

Their bodies, their souls.

Intertwined in ancient plays of power – dark over light, sun over moon – and love.

She loved his warmth.

She loved that everything of him, even his pain, was well written on his face and in the ochre parchments of his eyes.

She loved his fragilities more than his strengths.

He loved her fascination for his touch, the intense need of the heat of his flame.

He loved the dark of her skin against his pale one.

He loved her rare cruelties more than her compassion.

They made slow love, in a pond of some sort, in the forest just outside the temple, while looking for a plant that would make them sure to not have to confront her brother in less than a year.

They made fast love against a column, in an enormous hall, while Aang was calling for them in a near corridor.

They made angry love in his room when he couldn’t teach well and when she couldn’t best him in training.

They made all sort of love and it felt like living multiple lives, just like the Avatar but not alone, together.

And she felt sad for Aang, for his solitude, and he felt sad for his lost time.

Instead of running like a buzzing bee or playing with fire and pirates and teas and failures he could have had all of that before.

All of that flesh under his hands, those shivering lips against his ear, her gasps plunging into his mind, carving a special place in his memories.

And he was convinced, he really was, that memories would last forever.

Something that even death could not steal away.

If he was going to die before her in the war she’d always have memories of him.

Fragments of his naked body on hers, ochre stars in his face – she thus called his eyes – his warm arms around her.

But now, everything laid destroyed in front of him.

She was alive, she was there, across from him but she was so distant, so far removed from all that they were just a day ago that he felt like falling, like burning and dying and resurrecting just to die again in her empty stare.

How could he survive this? How could he take so much pain to the chest and not double up spitting blood all over their campfire?

A day and a night, again around the flames near the fountain.

Having to watch her delicate hands move into hair that were his to card through.

Having to brush her fingers taking the bowl that she was handing over and see the desert in her eyes.

Having to control himself, so much it physically hurts, not to embrace her when, far from the others, she strolled in front of him like he was no one.

That was dying.

He was sure that that was dying.

That was torture.

Real torture.

Not the silly burning-melting-left-part-face-eye, nor the boring monster-father-crazy-sister-gone-mother.

That, that was so much worse.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t give comburent to his fire.

His flame was gone.

He sat there, like a sad stray dog at the side of a crowded road, people passing by not seeing, not caring, not knowing.

And that was the cornerstone of all his agony. 

Their friends, that evening, were filling her in the lost weeks’ moments, the gone memories of the events leading to the present, but not a single one of them could talk to her of that kiss on his scar when he took her.

No one could be embarrassed for them at the sounds of that night.

No one knew how much she loved his skin’s warmth and how much he loved her.

They were all regaling her with tales of his stupid speech that day, Toph finding him in the forest, her burnt feet, Aang and their field trip, the two dragons and no one, not even one of them, could tell her that she had given herself to that man in front of her, that she had kissed every inch of his body.

It was all lost and the task of winning her over again seemed so enormous that even he, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, despaired to.

Because the truth was that he didn’t even know how he did it in the first place.

Now he knew that he lived their story in a sort of drunken stupor because he had always knew that he didn’t deserve her.

He had never deserved her

And the thought he would never again broke his spirit.

Their forbidden love was a secret that they had to keep to not jeopardize that fragile balance and the most important thing of all things.

Victory.

That it was also a pleasure to have a single, damned, thing all to himself was not something he would ever be ready to confess.

But now the same secret they cherished, in their fugitives stares across fire in the evenings, was their curse.

How predictable, how unoriginal.

Just when he thought he had finally found something so precious, something so beautiful, so filling – the void of his father’s inexplicable hate, the void of his mother’s vanishing, the void of three damn years on a boat alone at thirteen, the void of his wrong choices – he was robbed and couldn’t even have revenge or compensation for it.

§

That night, too, like all the previous, he sat there in a corner at the fire with the group.

While Sokka was talking about some kind of women warriors and Aang was laughing and Toph was making such a face he was thinking about two days before the accident, two days before the end of the best weeks of his life.

They had trained together, he and Katara. A spar. They loved to fight. He loved the way her small frame was going to be so dangerous, the hidden strength of her bending left him breathless, always.

Because people have been taught that a precipice could kill you, an earthquake could kill you, a fire could kill you but people tend to forget that even a pond could kill you if you don’t know how to swim.

And day after day, immersed into her, into her presence, into her love, into her wet body too, he discovered that he wasn’t able to swim as well as before, after every encounters he emerged from her waters less swiftly than the time before.

And, of course, he should have lost his mind in all that blue, because he couldn’t, for the love of Agni, stop himself from doing it again and again.

Naturally he fought her with all he had, doing otherwise would have been disrespectful, but a single contact was sufficient to make him hard as an earthbender rock.

She smiled when she found out, with a not ingenuous but not so confident kind of smile.

She was flattered, he could tell, and he loved to woo her even like this because he was being sincere as he had promised her.

He suddenly put a stop to their fight, grabbing her by the waists and pulling up her tunic, he didn’t bother taking their clothes off anymore – that was a treat for when they had time – and arranged her on her stomach.

He had discovered that position some night before and had lost his sanity with it, coming almost as soon as he had entered her.

He took her quickly but not without care, she was excited like him, he knew it, she was quivering into his hands, her back to his chest, his mouth on the nape of her neck. He kept his thrusts fast and long, she was panting, twitching on the ground behind the huge fountain in one of the most internal halls of the temple.

His hands moved, one sneaking under her to grip her opposite shoulder, the other searching the dusty space nearby for her hand.

When he found it he held tight for all the time.

It was incomprehensible how their bodies knew how do to things they never did before, it all was so natural, so easy, so fulfilling.

Like answering to a need he never knew he had.

On the ground, in the dirt of disuse, covered in sweat and water and shivers, he stopped feeling alone.

And he told her.

How could she… forget?

It was a sense of betrayal, of desperation, like none other before.

And it wasn’t even her fault, it was no one’s fault and that made it all the more horrible.

He wanted to stand, there and then, in the middle of all their pathetic storytelling – _he was being mean, he knew it, but he needed it, too much pain, too much agony_ – he wanted to stand and scream, at himself, at them, at Agni above… at her.

Wanted to tear something apart – _his heart, his own memories, that damned necklace, her clothes_ – wanted to cry and produce flames high enough to burn the entire world.

Why? Why fate had to have the face of his own father? The same incredible cruelty?

Letting him know happiness and then…

He was going to scream, he was going to hit someone, was going to stand and walk till the edge of the temple and fall to the pleasure of death.  
  


Two unseeing eyes turned towards him, he didn’t notice them, the half curious half worried milky stare couldn’t pierce through his haze of fury and burning pain.

The others were all laughing at something Sokka said, his righteous rage at the perpetual injustice in his life was mounting like the tide and the flames of the campfire started to grow higher and higher and Katara was not watching them, she was smiling at that other earthbender, Hari or something, she eventually felt the fire but it was a little too late and she singed the hem of one of her sleeves, she let out a soft gasp, half pain half surprise, and he could not control himself anymore, he had to touch her, had to take care of that brass beautiful skin – _so good near his own, the thought of their naked thighs intertwined on the forest floor, the splendid chiaroscuro, the contrast between them, the will to overcome their difference for something more important, her soft voice in the wood, stifling a small silver laughing, the red velvet of her cheeks again, three words echoing amongst the brooks singing and the trees_ – and he couldn’t stop, couldn’t think, he took her hand to watch it, to be sure she wasn’t hurt, to have a small, fleeting moment of comfort…

But she stole his heaven away.

Hard eyes of sapphire and snowstorms.

“Don’t touch me, Zuko”.

And that was a blow that he couldn’t hope to survive to.

A single tear carved itself a path on the right part of his face and he simply watched her rejection, before getting up and leaving with all the dignity he still could muster.

The milky eyes, that had started reading him inside out way before that display, seemed to follow his retreating figure till he disappeared in the bowels of the temple, a mere moment before a slow terrible understanding descended on them, her little mouth opening in a sharp intake of breath.

When the others turned to her Toph was furiously brushing her wet face with her little palm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To all of you a good read.  
> Mel Kaine

Trying to close her eyes, to find the sleep that kept eluding her, Katara sighed.

In the moonlit silence around she gave up. A feeling of unease pervaded her since he…

How could she still be thinking about it? It was nothing, just a figment of her tired mind, rolling over she brought her hand in front of her eyes, she was sure to have healed herself from the minimal burn so why did her fingers seem to tingle, to prickle? The ghost of a touch, like a footprint in the sand just before a wave, make her hold her breath.

It was so strange.

He was so strange.

That question the day of her accident, his tears tonight…  
Suddenly the memory of seeing him cry – _she couldn’t believe him capable of it, really_ – sent a pain in her chest so deep that, for a moment, she thought her heart would stop. She got up to breathe better, her hand cradled to her breasts.

It felt like watching the world from underwater, you knew what was supposed to be there and you recognized the shape of things but you couldn’t see the details and the details were what she felt was missing.

Something unimportant, so he said.

Yue held no answer when she looked up to her.

§

She studied him from afar, after that.

He and Aang were firebending, Sokka and Haru were hunting their dinner, Toph was nowhere to be seen, like Teo and the Duke.

She watched him, his movements were familiar to her – of course, a hundred fights with fire nation soldiers, the year of battles with him, four weeks of lessons with Aang (so they said) – of course they were familiar to her even if it wasn’t exactly like that.

It was not the bending – aye, that too of course – more like… his arms? Why should Zuko’s arms feel familiar to her?

Maybe she hadn’t regained all of her sanity after hitting her head…

But she kept watching him, training, and at the campfire, when she had to hand him food.

After the night of his tears, when she passed him his bowl, she found that something was missing, even in that simple act.

In the following days that feeling started to grow, like some kind of unwanted infesting plant.

She would look at his face and found a colour missing.

She would put her head down on her bed roll and found a smell missing.

She would sit at the edge of the temple crevice and found warmth missing.

She would lie on her stomach some nights and found pleasure missing.

She was losing her mind. No other explanation.

Her body wanted something and, for the love of Yue, she couldn’t remember what. She was losing her sleep, small, continuous shivers running up and down her legs, a strange kind of warm wet contraction below her core, towards a place that had never demanded anything before.

She always felt so restless that she would roll around for what it seemed like hours. Sometimes, lying prone, she almost felt something on her back, like flames but heavier, the sensation of her tunic being lifted, a caress up her spine, so she would shudder and roll immediately on her back staring shocked at the grey roof, but then sometimes, lying supine, she felt something like a presence, pleasurably pressing her down, tingles on the side of her neck, a warm print of a hand on one of her breasts, hot and humid nonsense murmured in her right ear.

And she would lift her hips, she would search the void above her, she would listen intently but she could never remember.

This thing was playing with her, was taunting her, she couldn’t even train properly anymore.

She felt… unbalanced.

Possessed by spirit’s touches, cold all the time – _she, a girl from the South Pole!_ – prey of some kind of unnamable necessities, her skin trembling when ochre eyes were around – _ochre? was that the name of the colour missing? it wasn’t something about a star or two?_ – her hands too dark, did she have paler patches of skin? Her lips dreaming of rough edges.

The dawns that she woke up to a short sea of black ink caressing her face were the worst.

Was this descending into madness? Feeling a thrill of anticipation passing in a deserted columned hall, snapping herself from fantasies of stopping in front of him to touch his chest, looking down his body searching for signs of… appreciation?

How could she have such… knowledge?

She never… She blushed spectacularly that night, while stirring the soup. She tried to keep herself away from him but could not entirely. Like a moth to the flames.

And she was scared and still suspicious but she couldn’t help feeling safe at the same time.

And then Aang lost control of his bending some day and he burned his teacher. She was watching from afar, like always, without thinking she ran to them to ascertain their conditions and looked down at Zuko. He was cradling his burnt shoulder with his hands and as he moved it to show her the damage per her request he couldn’t suppress a hiss.

She leapt back like burnt in turn.

That sound… one of her ghosts murmuring to her that she had heard it before, but not quite like that. She brought up huge blue eyes, to spy his golden ones for some kind of deceit, but what she saw made her grasp the first available excuse to run away for a moment.

She blushed furiously while searching for some clean bandages to justify her disappearance. What kind of… how could she have thought… what the hell… it was clearly a sound of pain, why her mind did such an… inappropriate connection and his imagination ran wild… she never… and even if… surely not _him_ of all people…

Tui and La, how could she return there to cure him?  
But maybe that was the answer, maybe she had touched him before to heal him – she should ask Aang later – it would explain why his skin felt not unfamiliar to her, even if that would have told her nothing about all the rest.

She shook her head, filled her waterskin with fresh water and headed back to them.  
When she got back there Zuko had left. 

Looking at the empty place around the fire she tried to ignore the tendrils of guilt getting up her back, the wound must have been superficial or he would have returned by now, he had let one of the others know that he wasn’t hungry.

She had been tempted to take a bowl of food and head to his room but the embarrassment of her thoughts stopped her, how could she look him in the eyes? Go near him when her mind was playing those kind of sounds and images? Touch him to check his wound?

Looking at him for days, scrutinize his body, imagining such things.  
It sure seemed like instead of her being in danger from him… was he not safe with her?

She decided against disturbing him – _coward, you’re a coward my girl_ – and started to distribute dinner and smiles to all the others.  
When Toph asked for another bowl her relaxed expression faltered for a second but she obliged.  
The little earthbender never asked for a second helping before and Katara’s curiosity spiked up when she saw her put the untouched bowl near her and wait.

When dinner was over and she was picking up bowls and chopsticks with the corner of an eye she saw Toph disappearing towards the area where they usually trained, at the west edge of the temple.

She tried to ignore all the questions inside her mind, the interest for all the strange events that filled her day but she also knew herself better than that, she knew when she was losing a battle so she stopped wasting time, landed unceremoniously the bowls on Sokka’s lap with the order to wash them and ran after the blind earthbender.

When she reached the west part of the temple, fire was illuminating the night in brilliant red and sparkling violet. Short, powerful bursts of flames were laving the stones and the columns, she just hid behind one of those and watched.

Golden sparks cascading from his fingers, another shiver shook her – another memory just out of reach – powerful bending, but something was dissimilar, she had seen him bend before, she had seen him train with Aang and what she was watching now was so different, felt so different, potent but imperfect, raw and raging, almost like he was fighting against something that could not be destroyed, something that had taken away the most precious thing that he had.

He seemed so furious, exhausted, unstable, but yet so powerful, so incapable of giving up, the scarred half of his face so cruel in the blood red light, the good part of his face so sad and pale in the ochre of the flames.

Abruptly he stopped, extinguishing all fires except for one brazier near the edge behind him.  
He stood there, in the middle of the indigo coolness of the evening, his chest gulping air, his fists tightened, his head bent.

She was still asking herself what had happened to him, what could ever unbalance a fighter like him like this, what could have caused all that – the rage, the pain, the isolation, the tears – when a movement caught her attention.

Toph chose that moment to let herself be seen and carefully reached him.  
And he looked down at her, his eyes alert but not surprised.

The little earthbender stopped just in front of him and smiled – not the cocky, superior smile that she was so famous (or infamous) for, a strange kind of awkward, little smile, like she finally allowed herself to look like a twelve years old girl again – and then she murmured something about eating, pointing to the bowl that she had brought for him.

And he looked at it, at her, a strange kind of smile on his mouth too – like a wound on his face, a splitting of lips looking so painful even afar, something so precarious, hanging between desolation and need – until Toph moved forward and without hesitation took his bigger hand in her little one.

Katara’s eyes grew wide for the surprise. Even more when she heard the girl murmur huskily:

“I’m so sorry”.  
  


And Zuko just watched the blind girl for a long time, perfectly still, and Katara was sure he was going to laugh that cruel laughter she had heard so many times before and toss away her hand and her pity with indignation and arrogance.

Or that, at least, he would leave just like that morning.

Instead she watched with a gasp of unexpected emotion the young man gracefully fall to his knees in front of the little bender, his hand holding to hers for dear life, his forehead dropping forward till it touched one of Toph’s shoulders.

And he just remained like that.

Without laughing or shouting or raging or crying.

Just leaning to her solid little form, still like the vague shapes of the mountains in the distance, holding her hand.

A strange assortment of growing emotions started to clog up her throat the more she watched and the more the time was fleeting, suspended in disbelief and uncertainty.

Embarrassment, of course, and discomfort at watching something clearly personal, astonishment for his behavior, a sadness so deep, an anguish so fresh and a flare that had nothing to do with her agitation and all to do with the contact between the two of them.

The last thought unlocked her legs and made her run away.  
  


§

Next morning brought her a tiredness she was sadly used to and a sort of realization.

She was a fighter, a master waterbender, but she was a healer too. She could not, she would not forget that at her convenience. She remembered the only lesson she had been taught during her time with the Northern Tribe, about the art of healing and the responsibilities to wield such a power.  
Water was the only element of the four to offer that kind of possibility and having that meant to have to use it with compassion, to honor life and creation, to preserve existence and to keep the balance, to serve a greater good, but it didn’t mean that she got to decide who deserved it and who didn’t. She couldn’t raise herself over others to judge them, she had to be a vessel for that power not its tyrant. She couldn’t let herself be hindered by things like personal dislike or embarrassment, she was not a little girl anymore, she had thought that before and now was time to prove it to herself and to the others.

If Zuko was behaving like that and her friends were tolerating him and trying to accept him, and going as far as consoling him, she could certainly offer her help as well.

Maybe his wound was giving him trouble and Toph sensed it, maybe he had some other kind of an issue, as a healer first and member of that special family second, she would go to him and ask about his wellbeing.

With that decision in mind she started to make breakfast, she ate with the others, setting aside a portion and, when she was sure that Zuko wasn’t coming to eat, she rose to find him.

No one questioned her, apart from Toph.

The little earthbender stopped her just a step into the arch leading to the chambers.

And Katara couldn’t have said why but she felt suddenly, and inexplicably, angry.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea, Sugar Queen”.

Trying to reign into the irritation that took her at those words she turned towards her, out of habit.

“I just want to check his wound, I’m not going to fight with him or attack him and he has to eat or he will not have the strength to keep teaching Aang”.

“It’s not healing or eating what he needs now”.

“And you’ve become an expert on these matters since when?”

“Since I can remember what you cannot”.

Her mounting fury subsided slightly.  
  


“What are you talking about?”  
  


“I won’t tell you because it’s not my place to do it and because I don’t know the exact events, but I know that he won’t too, because his stupid honor would demand such a stupid thing and I don’t know you but I’m tired of stupid things getting in the way of my life, of our life, and most of all I don’t like him being so desperate so, I don’t know what, but you should do something about it”.

Katara fell silent.

What kind of insane play was she playing?

She was about to _do something_ but she stopped her and told her about desperation and events she couldn’t remember anything about.

Why was Zuko desperate?

Why was he hurt?

What had honor to do with them?

Since when he had become _her_ problem?

The audacity of that girl! She watched her go away, leaving her with more questions than before and not even a single answer, leaving her so unsure she hated her for it, even if for just a moment.

Sticking to her decision, nonetheless, she reached his room just to find her courage faltering. Only the thought of having to go back to Toph’s smirk kept her there till the door opened on his own accord and gold appeared behind it. She gasped, taken by surprise. He made to close it again, murmuring an almost inaudible excuse when she took courage in both hands and asked permission to enter.

He granted it with an air that could have been of uncertainty on any other face and, as she stepped inside, the familiarity of his room left her breathless for a moment. She remembered it even if she had no recollection of ever being there before, the drawing of his uncle and his mother, the swords, the duvet – the one rough but very warm – how could she know about all of this?

She almost shook her head out of habit, she was there to get answers not more questions, so she turned towards him and handed over the bowl with his breakfast.

He tilted his head in a silent thank you but set it aside to wait for her to reveal the motivation of her visit.

Trying for a composed expression, to cover her unease at the million things that were screaming at her attention, she asked him about his shoulder.

He looked at her, surprised, and shrugged. Not convinced she asked him to let her see. He obeyed.

While he was taking off his tunic she asked, suddenly:

“Did I heal you before?”  
  


Without noticing they found themselves no further than a feet apart now, her fingers skimming on the slightly pinker skin above his collarbone. When he didn’t answer she made the mistake to lift her head, his gaze was so intense up close, his eyes like dangerous lakes of sulfur, his lips lightly opened.

His answer was a hot whisper in the impossibly thin void between them.

“Yes”.

And for some reason she knew then and there that he wasn’t talking about physical wounds.

His body was so close like never before, she didn’t feel threatened but inexplicably, foolishly, drawn to him, towards his warmth, and she was sure of that like of nothing else in her life, he was warm, so much warm and maybe that would cure the cold that had been taking up residence under her skin all the time.

But that last drop of hesitation cost her the entire moment, he stepped back, suddenly, like she was made of venom and spikes. And she couldn’t understand, she thought about Toph’s words, about his desperation, his unfathomable needs, maybe she was the problem, did she do something? She didn’t remember, she couldn’t.

The sounds left her mouth before she could really stop them.

“Did I do something… to you?”  
  


His eyes turned towards her quickly, wide and fixed, like those of a serpent ready to strike at the barest of movements and his words, too, seemed to pour from his lips without control.  
  


“You did many things to me” his voice sounding hoarse and parched.  
  


A fine tremor took hold of her, her breathing hitching, an invisible hand clutching at her heart, its beating so fast in her throat like a small bird’s wings.

In the heavy silence he turned again, giving her the vision of his broad, still uncovered, shoulders.

Was he trembling, too? Could have been the flickering candle’s light…  
  


“Please, leave” he whispered.  
  


No.

A refusal strong enough to choke her rose up from within her.

She would get to the bottom of that, she had to, she couldn’t go on like this, dangling from broken chords of interrupted awarenesses, her feet just an inch from a floor of safeties and regained memories.

She would put an end to it.

“You have to tell me if I… ”

And this time he really stroke like a serpent, violating her personal space, making her retreat to the door, his two tightened fists against the old wood at the sides of her head.

She had no water with her, but she felt more confusion than fear, her heart fluttering but not in panic.

The ochre of his eyes becoming violent like a sandstorm, like a sea of fire with waves of lava against the thin circles of what remained of his irises, red going darker and darker, burgundy to a dried blood colour. They stayed like that, a breath apart, his body tense and strung like a bow, she stuck to the door with a front row seat on the show that was his intense gaze.

His quick panting stabbing the delicate skin of her neck, his teeth almost bared, like a predator doing everything in its power to not end the chase too soon.

Time stopped and died and seemed to live again only when he repeated, slowly, roughly, agonizingly:

“Please, leave”.

She fled.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are, the end of this adventure.  
> I deeply thank everyone of you, for reading and supporting this story. It had meant so much for me. Before the end of my forced holidays I was working on an eventual sequel, starring hurt!Zuko and Hakoda, but it's not complete and my inspiration has, kind of, run dry. I'd like to finish it, don't know, I do not have much time as of now. Naturally I won't add it before completing it because I don't believe in "Let's go then we'll see".   
> For now thanks again for all your love.  
> To all of you a good read.
> 
> Mel Kaine

The north wind caressed her, a gentle prelude to the cold embrace that she was given moments later, when it blew in a low and continuous moan against her.

She mourned the loss of the warmth that she knew, even without her memories, that she had had before.

Her eyes, adjusted to the very dim light of the twilight, couldn’t make out more than the top of a forest way far below to that precipice so dear to her.

She felt that something important happened there, but it was, again, another thing that she had lost, seemingly forever.

Like her mother.

Like her faith.

Like her peace.

Like her kindness, even.

Just another piece that she’d have to leave behind.

She was so tired, so, so tired.   
Exhausted.

She would fight till the end, nevertheless.

Her peacock eyes full of the black of the incoming night.

– _Not yet, but soon_ – she told herself.

§  
  


Head filled with abject thoughts in his sinner hands.   
Seated on his bed in a room made of unforgiving rock and her torturing smell.

She had left hours ago but her presence had remained with him, still so real he was able to hear it breathing in his ears, shivering in the emptiness, making the air vibrating, malicious voices in his head, like the one those hours ago kept yelling at him to find solace from his constant pain, even if that elusive reprieve should have come at the price of taking her against her will.

– _Not even capable of keeping the only woman who didn’t look at you in revulsion, Zuzu_ –

“Go away” he said to her, to the void, to the anguish.

Other voices inside of his mind, advising him kindly of mourning that love and go on, or screaming derisively at his last and utmost failure or weeping miserably at his deep sense of loss and solitude.

It had been so hard to control himself before, he needed her, he needed her soft smile, her kind soul, her kiss on his scar, her thighs around his hips.

Sending her away was all he could do, to not commit the irreparable.

He hoped for war, hoped to be sent to fight on the morrow, hoped to never have to go back, to never have to get out of that room.

He couldn’t make it out of it alive.  
He wouldn’t.

He didn’t want to.

No more.

§

She did her chores with a new kind of stability. Smiling and preparing in meditation and training lightly in the long hours of the day.

She didn’t disturb him anymore.

She had nothing to offer.  
Not yet.

§

  
  


She rose from the fire, that evening, with a certain air of ineluctability and a face serious enough to command silence around her without saying nothing.

“I’m going to meditate, please do not interrupt me, whatever the reason”.

The others nodded at her, Zuko was not among them, of course.  
Aang looked up with an uncertain smile and immediately offered his silent company, if she felt up to that.

She smiled at him but her voice was hard as steel, albeit still sweet.

“No, thank you. I wish to be completely alone”.

And then she headed towards the edge of the crevice, her footsteps illuminated by the full moon.

She sat away from the brink but still close enough to see the rising darkness from down there being washed away by the gentle, silvery glow of Yue.  
She sent a quick prayer to her, asking for guidance and closed her eyes.

She lied.  
She lied to herself many weeks ago.  
She lied to her friends tonight.

She was going to do what she had sworn to never do again, even if she was going to do it to herself it still counted as a broken promise.  
But it was a sacrifice she was more than ready to do. Just like shouldering the consequences.

She drew a slow, deep breath, feeling the power of the moon filling her core till it was overflowing.  
  


She was going to need all the help she could get because in no more than a few moments she was going to bend her own blood to find what was restraining her memories and cure it.

She wanted those memories back like she never wanted anything before.

She needed them, by now.

For too long a time she had wandered in fear around his pain, around her hunger for truth.

All of that would end, under her goddess’ will.

So she drew another breath and concentrated on finding her own pulse, the flowing sound of her blood running in her veins, the steady rhythm of her own heart.

And when she found them what she had to do was clear to her, like a splendid spring sunrise dawning on a renovated world and even if it was night the light was so bright that she thanked that her eyes were firmly closed.

§

When she returned at the fire it was late, but not so late that everyone had gone to sleep. Her brother, Toph, Aang and Haru were still awake, she glided softly from the shadows, her eyes glowing in the dark, she didn’t make a sound but Toph was aware of her presence, was aware of her movements and the way she walked now was hers, of course, but different in some regard and the little girl turned towards her even if the gesture in itself was futile.

Gently but surely Katara reached her, got to her knees in front of her doubtful face and hugged her tightly, with fondness.

She murmured a smiling thank you in her ear and as soon as she did that, in the general bewilderment, she left to find Zuko.

§

The nights were the worst, all light going out, robbing him of his power, leaving him prey of darkest doubts and unimaginable pain, vision after vision of pure moments of bliss that had been but never would again.

Cold fabric mocking him around his body, his scar pulsing without soft lips to console it, his fire dimming till it resembled only a firefly’s light, hovering in a sky of turbulence and cold rain.

He sat there, on the stone floor near the door, waiting for salvation, for a miracle, for someone seeing his worth after all his sad and pathetic trying.

He did not cry because, really, he had nothing left.

§

She walked through the temple’s ruins with new eyes, rediscovering spaces that now held for her a special place in the heart, again.

A sad, sighed out smile at her lips, so much lost time.

She reached his room and quietly entered, without knocking.  
Immediately looking for him, her warm, honest, gentle Zuko.

When she saw him there, on the floor, looking at her like she was a dangerous mirage in a desert of lost occasions, liquid pain in the ochre that she had loved so dearly, her heart gave a clench so strong she let out an aching moan.

She fell to her knees in front of him, her trembling hands reaching for him instantly.  
Oh she was so sorry, so sorry.

Her eyes filled with warm, salty waters that she didn’t bend away because were proofs of her regrets, of her emotions, of her love.

“I’m so sorry I left you alone, so sorry, Zuko”.

And she kissed his scar and she kissed his lips.

The skin under her ministrations trembling and shivering and shuddering, those eyes of amber and honey going impossibly wide, impossibly deep, incredulous.

Her wet face smiling sweetly at him, the lines of her eyebrows so sad, her smaller hands framing his handsome face.

And she knew exactly what he was thinking, what kind of terrible lies his poisoned mind was hissing at him, what kind of fear – _fear of destruction, the dying breaths of his hope, save it please save it_ – was holding him still.

So, like he didn’t talk to her so many days ago to convince her of the good inside of him, she was not going to use words to give him credit for all the pain that he had shouldered for her fault.

She kissed him again, arranging herself in the warm space between his bent knees, her arms around his neck, her body against his heat, her affection against his sorrow.

So many kisses and pecks on his mouth, on his cheeks, on his forehead, on his hair, and his neck, his eyes, his jaw, his chest, his immobile hands.

She didn’t mind keeping doing so till dawn if necessary – couldn’t imagine what he had been through – touching him was a gift to herself too, an answer to her unasked questions, her ghosts dissolving in his warm embrace, all the strange sounds and feelings and details colliding in a sense of balance that let her feel whole once again.

The march of their shared, found again memories making her blush and laugh.

And in that sound of joy he woke up, surfacing from cold icy currents of an era long nightmare, his hands needing to assure himself of the truth, his eyes roaming her form, his fingers brushing her hair, the urgency, the sudden hunger leaving him wild like a savage beast in a famine.

His body covering hers, one of his palm protecting her head from the cruel stones, the other pushing and tearing and kneading and lifting and feeling.

His mouth drinking her lips, caressing her face, like wave after wave of necessary confirmation, to erase those terrible words days ago – _don’t touch me, Zuko_ – to cure his soul, his past, his fire, his present, to give himself pleasure giving it to her, to take the chance to finally use the same three words she used all those weeks ago to which he never had the time to reply, to breathe, and to have her again and again, insatiably prisoner of her warmth, her moans, her shivers.

In the throes of passion another pinwheel of colours and lights and senses and images in front of her eyes.  
Calm seas of ink on land of ivory, fiery crimson cascades of heat and delicate fingers, tepid fabric and contrasting skins, a mahogany flower of hair on the smoke grey stones, deep sky blue eyes surfacing on land of pleasure and wet sand, a voice wild like running horses and rough like bricks, flames of devotion in adult’s words, lucid promises and bravery, thoughtless groans, sweet whimpers, carved necklaces dangling on bottomless abysses, solid columns and vaults seen in ecstatic instants, a secret made of suffering and lush plants in the forest, feet over the precipice, warm arms chasing solitude like an invader, sparks of joy in the midnight silence, the rising of their love over mountains, the bending of their beliefs to accommodate beauty, a peace offering made without words, honesty and gentle lips on ugly pieces of wrong cruelty, cries against hands, molted lava burning their shame, hurried motions in slow repetitions, fireflies behind closed eyes but above it all his ochre. 


End file.
